RAGIN, DEREK LEE

Derek Lee Ragin is regarded as one of the foremost countertenors of our day. In great demand as a master of Baroque vocal style, he is also an inspired interpreter of contemporary music. His performances of such diverse repertoire are characterized by an unusual warmth and expressivity, and he has received unanimous accolades from critics and audiences throughout the world. In recent seasons he sang the 1739 (first performance) version of Handel’s Israel in Egypt in Budapest, sang in the première of Der Name der Rose by the Munich composer Enjott Schneider, a composition for countertenor and organ written especially for him, and with the London-based group Florilegium returned to the Budapest Early Music Festival and the Handel Festival in Halle. Engagements have included appearances with Munich Opera, the Vienna Konzertverein, Apollo’s Fire, the Aulos Ensemble and the American Bach Soloists, among many others. In America he made his début at the Metropolitan Opera in Giulio Cesare, subsequently returning to appear in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and sang with the New York Philharmonic in the world première of Kancheli’s And Farewell Goes Out Sighing. In addition to appearances in major theatres and concert halls throughout the United States, Europe and Australia, he also has a number of important and acclaimed recordings to his credit and awards have included those of first place winner in the Purcell-Britten Prize for Concert Singers in England, and first prize at the 35th International Music Competition in Munich. He also lent his voice to Farinelli, a film about the famed eighteenth-century castrato which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film in 1995. The soundtrack won the Golden Record award the following year in Cannes.

BRITTEN: Canticles Nos. 1-5 / The Heart of the Matter (English Song, Vol. 9)	8.557202